Openai Sam Altman, accompanied by US President Donald Trump, or Oracle Cito Larry Ellson (R), CEO of Softbank Masayoshi Son (2nd-R), speaks during a press conference in the Roosevelt room in the White House on January 21, 2025 in Washington The capital.
Andrew Harnik Gety pictures
CNBC stressed that Softbank is in talks to invest up to $ 25 billion in Openai, making it the best supporter to start operating.
The deal has not yet been completed, according to a person who is aware of the issue that asked not to be named because the negotiations are confidential. the foot He was the first to report the potential investment of Softbank.
In November, Openai allowed employees to sell $ 1.5 billion shares in a critical offer to Softbank, as familiar people said this issue CNBC at that time. One of the sources said that the founder of Softbank Masayoshi Son was fixed in ordering a larger share after placing $ 500 million in the last Openai financing round.
Softbank, Openai and Oracle A partnership in a joint venture called Stargit was revealed in the White House by President Donald Trump last week. The plan calls for investing billions of dollars in artificial intelligence infrastructure.
Openai, which has been relied upon so far Microsoft As a major investor, she is heading towards a profitable structure. Openai was established in 2015 as a non -profit organization, and it creates a company of general benefit to oversee commercial operations, remove some non -profit restrictions and allow it to work like a high -growth startup. This means that it needs more capital and more account to compete in the gym, a market that analysts say can reach $ 1 trillion within a decade.
“Hundreds of billions of dollars invested by major companies are now in developing artificial intelligence shows what Openai will really require to continue to follow up on the task,” wrote Openai’s Board of Directors in the blog post last month.
Openai was evaluated at $ 157 billion by private sector investors. In late 2022, the company launched Chatgpt Chatbopht and the mutation began in artificial intelligence. Openai closed the latest round of $ 6.6 billion in October, preparing to compete strongly with Elon Musk, as well as Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Anthropic.
Meanwhile, a Chinese competitor explodes in the deep United States, a laboratory starting Amnesty International outside China, watching his application rises upward Apple Application store classifications this week and US markets toured reports that its strong model has been trained on a small part of the cost of American competitors.
The CEO of Openai Sam Altman described the R1’s Deepseek model as “impressive” and Books on x It is clear that “we will present much better models and also active to get a new competitor!”
Softbank did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
He watchesStargate project shows that Softbank is in a unique position
